Stasis
by JasperK
Summary: A Gift fic for Eden Evergreen. The iterations of chaos that happen when Vash gets injured. Told from the POV of plant engineer William Reeve. (Thank you to EE for the use of her characters!)


**Spoilers**: More of the not quite expected type.

If you have not read any of Eden Evergreen's stuff, then this is a huge plot spoiler, sorry!

Spoilers start from here onwards – you have been warned!

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**A/N**: Another story dedicated to Eden Evergreen. She has so graciously helped me out of a story hole in allowing me to write these. Well "allowing" is not the right word, 'cause I cheekily wrote them with no permission and gave them to her as gift fics. However, as a result I am now working on my own stuff again. (: So THANK YOU Eden Evergreen!

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This scene occurs between the incidents of [ch 4 of Shared Memories , VQL 4.5], and of [ch 5 of Vash Vindicated, VQL 4]. As to how and why Rem is around, go and read her stories. Fan fic of Fan fic, again. :)

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**Stasis**

Or

_**States of being**_

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William Reeve brushed his long fringe out of his eyes as he walked wearily back from the plant rooms. He needed a haircut, but had had no time to get one. He tugged at his fine red hair; perhaps he could take a pair of scissors to his hair tonight. He grimaced to himself that sort of distracted thinking was just like him when things were going badly. Things always went badly when a plant was nearing the end of her life. Shyla, the independent plant had spent many nights with her, but all she could do was to ease the discomfort. There was nothing she could do for death.

This particular plant had been brought from an outlying town, and her condition had only deteriorated in transportation. Chief engineer Tom Harper had been livid that they had even deigned to move her in such a state. However, seeing the condition she was in, they had accepted the bulb and installed her, but had only connected the life support, not the power outlet.

He was somewhat glad Vash was not around. He never said anything, but his eyes spoke more eloquently than the soft tears Shyla cried. He stepped aside in the passage as several medics walked purposefully past him. Then one turned to him.

"Hey, you're a plant engineer, right?"

"Ah, yes?" He said, exhaustedly.

"How long can a plant stay in stasis?"

He shrugged, not knowing what the medic was talking about.

"He won't know what to do with Vash, he's an orb plant engineer. We have to wake her!"

"Vash?" William felt his ears prick up. "He's a friend of mine. How can I help?"

The medics laughed.

"He's a friend of everyone."

"Do you know what stasis is?" Another asked and waved him along after them.

"Describe it." He said, almost jogging with the pace they kept. They were headed toward the cold sleep chambers.

"Well, its where one plant syncs with another and they restore and sustain the hurt one."

"Ah, yes. Shyla would try that with Ephemera." He used the name Shyla had called her, the dying plant. "It helps the other to relax and heal."

There was a silence as the medics glanced awkwardly at each other.

"Is it true that they can die doing that?"

"Oh yes." It had been their main objection with Shyla trying it.

The medics turned and ran. He caught up with them while they hastily coded their way through the door to the main cold sleep chamber, rather than the usual viewing chamber, and as such, it was very much a restricted access area.

They did not refuse him entry, so he trailed after them. He wanted to ask them what had them so worried, but until whatever had panicked them settled, he did not want to interrupt their haste. He watched as they performed the procedure to open a cold sleep capsule. He knew the process and guessed whom they were reawakening: Rem, the one who had raised Vash. He felt his stomach plummet then. What had happened to Vash?

He watched as the young woman with raven black hair came around groggily at first then with greater awareness of where she was. She frowned up at the faces around her.

"Shyla?" Her voice emerged as a slightly hoarse whisper, but pleasant to the ears.

The poker faces of the medics let nothing through. They smiled.

"You'll see her soon." One said reassuringly. "I just need to check your reflexes."

Rem sat on the side of the cold sleep capsule and dutifully went through the medical check.

"You're not telling me something." She said with patient stubbornness.

"We'll tell you when you've had something to eat."

"I will hear it here, thank you." Rem glared at the medic. When none of them answered, William found himself at the receiving end of a sharp glare from her dark eyes. "Oh, I remember you. William, isn't it? You were an intern under Tom Harper?"

"Ah, er, yes?" He volunteered. That had been ten years ago.

Rem stood up and he was surprised to discover that for such a firm stare, she was quite a short woman. She walked slowly over to him and folded her arms under her breasts. He hastily hauled his eyes up to her face; did women not know how distracting such a gesture was?

"What has happened? Where is Shyla?"

"She's out on a medic exchange with a nearby town, as far as I know." He said honestly.

"Why are these doctors so edgy?"

"Er..."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Rem, don't interrogate him," one of the medics said in a placating manner, "he doesn't know anything."

"Oh, he knows something." She said, not taking her eyes off his face. "And he's upset." She turned around and from the way the medics winced William was very glad that he was not on the receiving end of that glare. "What has happened to Vash?"

There was a horrible silence. William put it all together in a flash of awful insight. The shock of adrenaline woke him up from that day's exhaustion of work and sorrow.

"Shyla's holding _Vash_ in stasis?" He breathed in horror. "What happened?"

The medics glared at him as Rem turned to him for the full story.

"We weren't going to tell her so bluntly."

"Blunt or no, I want the whole story, now." Rem said in a tone that booked no argument.

The medics looked awkwardly at each other.

"William?" Rem prompted.

"They only mentioned stasis in passing, I guessed." William said, worried, then turned to the medics. "We need to help them. Explain to us as we drive out there."

"What? No, we can't..." The medic did not see the dangerous expression in Rem's eyes.

"As we drive out to them." William said firmly. "I have a car, let us go. Now."

Rem followed him out and the medics scrambled after them, arguing.

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The drive out to the town where Shyla was posted was a long trek through the desert. Two of the medics slept in the back seat, awkwardly positioned around the medical equipment they had brought. Rem sat almost calmly in her seat in the front, but the set of her jaw and the steel in her eyes belayed her stance. William drove.

"How well do you know Shyla?"

He jumped; he had thought Rem in her own world.

"Well enough, she's been assisting us with a very sick plant."

There was silence.

"Dying?" Rem asked her voice soft.

"Yeah." He could not keep the tremor out of his voice and cringed that she might think him soft. He was startled when she reached over and patted his arm.

Rem sighed softly, as she settled her feet on the chair, and wrapped her arms around her knees.

"Thank you for your concern." She murmured.

"It's my job and passion." He said self-consciously.

There was silence and he caught Rem's puzzled expression turn to one of understanding.

"I was talking about Vash and Shyla." She clarified.

He kept his eyes on the bleached desert road trying to ignore the blush on his face. He felt a bit of a fool. It did not help that she was pretty. Ugh, where had that thought come from? He was helping Shyla in gratitude for what she had done for Ephemera.

"Ah." He said as smoothly as he could. "Then it would be a debt of friendship and gratitude."

"You know them both?"

"Yes, Vash often visits the plants when he's in the village. Though if you ask me, it's the free walking independent he's really interested in." He grinned, then realised how inappropriate that was. Ah, was he just digging himself a hole.

Rem laughed softly.

"Perhaps. But it is not for us to have such a say in their lives." She murmured.

William gave a snort of laughter. He could not help himself.

"Vash sure has no compunction about giving such advice. You'd swear he was an old granny by the way he quietly drops hints."

Rem stared at him.

"What? Are we talking about Vash here? Vash the Stampede? Nate Saverem?"

"Yes, him. You raised him, I heard." William watched as Rem raised that elegant black eyebrow of hers and hastily continued with what he had to say, he was not going to stare down that look. "He told Tom Harper that mooning after Stacy Ann Harington was not going to catch her, and suggested he ask her out. Tom did and they got married a year later. Apparently he's helped a few men get over their timidity."

William felt the silence was becoming a little too drawn out and sneaked a glance. Rem had had hand over her mouth and her shoulders were shaking. Her eyes sparkled with laughter, then she put her hands over her face and the laughter turned to sobs.

"I just want to see him, one last time." She cried.

William gingerly patted her back, feeling a little useless. He could not drive any faster than he was doing.

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Rem had cried herself into a half stupor and lay against the window of the car fighting sleep as he drove into town. She sat up as he slowed outside the hospital. The medics were already assembling what they would take in.

William parked the car and the Medics piled out with their stuff. William helped them unload the trunk and returned to lock the car, only to find Rem sitting frozen in the front seat.

"Rem?"

She jumped, and seemed to come to herself.

"Let's go inside." He prompted, then walked around the car and opened her door. She climbed out slowly as if she were waking from the horrors that had held her still. He wondered what had caused such a reaction, some powerful memory in her past. He held out his arm and was quite surprised when she slipped hers around his. For such a collected forthright woman she was surprisingly vulnerable at times. He followed the medics in. They were allowed into the ward, but the security guard stopped them.

"No admittance except for family members."

William dug out his plant engineer's pass.

"We're here on business."

The guard eyed it suspiciously, but grudgingly had to agree with it.

"Leave your weapons here."

"We're not armed."

After a brief frisking the guard allowed them in. William felt Rem claw his arm so tightly he felt the circulation halt in his left hand. On the bed in the adjoining ward lay both Vash and Shyla. Were it not for all the life support plugged in to them and Vash's bandages they could almost be lovers asleep together.

"Rem, sit here." William led her over to a chair on Vash's side. He pried off her hand and placed it over Vash's prosthetic. At least she would not cut the circulation holding that.

He slipped among the medics who were fussing over their vital signs and took out the energy meter he had in his pocket. They used it for testing the excess energy in plants, but here it would serve to know if Shyla had committed herself to suicide or not.

"What's that?" One of the medics asked as he rested it against Shyla's upper arm, that was the place he found he got the best reading on independents.

"They're plants," another medic remarked, awed, "Huh, never thought to check their energy ratings. What's the verdict, Engineer Reeve?"

"Don't separate them, and I'll have to check in an hour again. It's fluctuating, as if she's sending out waves of energy at a time."

"What about Vash?" Rem asked, wide eyed.

He checked and found the same pattern. He smiled.

"They're synced and holding each other in a survival stasis. That's good and bad. For now, they seem to be stabilising. But if anything happens, the one will pull the other down."

"Then step out of the way engineer, and let us see to their stabilisation." The medic ordered.

William sat and watched people. He watched how Shyla had curled herself almost protectively against Vash. He watched how Vash unconsciously echoed her stance. He watched the medics as they argued with Rem and she grudgingly allowed them to change Vash's bandages. She leaned against the wall, her eyes never leaving Vash's face. She had a beauty in her worried expression; her facial features were not common ones. Her skin colour and eye shape were different and intriguing. He looked away as she unconsciously tucked her fine black hair behind her ear. He felt a shock thrill through him. He had not just caught himself eyeing Rem, who knew more about engineering than even Tom Harper, who had raised Vash the Stampede and Millions Knives, if the rumours were to be believed. He needed a distraction.

He walked out to get supper for them and returned to find Rem sitting at Shyla's side now, stroking her pale hair. She took the fast food package with some surprise.

"Thanks." She mused, slowly opening it. "I've been so worried, I forgot I was hungry."

William realised then that he would have to look after her. He did not begrudge that task.

"I've rented a place at the hotel over the road. I could book you a room."

"I'll sleep here thanks." Rem said, but smiled her appreciation.

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It was three days of waiting, but Shyla eventually came to. By this time, two other plant engineers had arrived and had stood as uselessly as he had, measuring the energy output. They were not orb plants where external energy in the form of electricity could be added to their systems. The human medics were doing a better job at healing them.

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Rem met him at the door as he entered the ward for the morning.

"We're taking them home." She said with a fierce grin. "Shyla says it's okay to move them."

William grinned back in relief. He slipped passed her and caught Shyla's smile.

"Hey, Shyla." He clasped her hand.

"William." She smiled. "How is Ephemera?"

He almost laughed at her complete lack of self-concern, she had almost died doing what she had done, and she was worried about the plant back home.

"When I left she was doing the best she could. She's been asleep more lately."

Shyla gazed sadly at him.

"I'll come and sing to her when I feel well again."

"Thank you." He said quietly.

He felt Rem come stand beside him; again, he noticed a peculiar vulnerability in her face. She seldom showed such emotions so openly, but she did before Shyla.

"We're preparing the truck, Shyla. The medics will wheel you out."

The medics and an escort of Feds wheeled the two patients out. Shyla was awake and Vash unconscious still. William was not nearly as horrified as Rem to learn of the attack on Vash that Shyla and a quick thinking of a doctor had averted. Rem clambered into the back of the truck before the medics could stop her and glared so heatedly at them that they left her there. William drove home alone, trailing in the dust wake of the truck.

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The next morning he reported for duty and spent half an hour explaining to Tom Harper why he had just disappeared without any by your leave. Tom let him go with a warning and he headed down to the operation stations. He ran through the checks and operations of that day. As the afternoon wound down, he found himself sitting below Ephemera's orb. She was sleeping.

"Is she Ephemera?"

He jumped to his feet, ducking just in time to avoid slamming his head on the orb surface. Rem walked up and stared up at the plant angel with black hair.

"Yes."

To his surprise, Rem reached out, placing both hands on the orb, with an expression of delicate care he had not ever dreamed could cross her determined face. There was a soft sad beauty there. He only realised he was staring at her when she moved suddenly and her eyes flickered and met his. Well, he would lose nothing by asking.

"Do you want to join me for coffee? I could tell you about her, but sound disturbs her if we talk too much here."

Rem's firm gaze softened then. Almost hesitant and skittish, as if for the first time she noticed him as a man and was uncertain.

He reached over and picked up the report file.

"Or you could read the weekly summaries. I know Shyla would want to see them, if you don't mind taking them to her."

Rem took the file and tucked it under her arm then gazed at him.

"I'd prefer tea at this hour." She said and walked to the door, then turned as she reached it. "Is it still your treat?"

William felt a weight lift off his shoulders, perhaps, just perhaps, this could work.

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JK

11 October 2013


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